State capacity has long been associated with lower levels of internal conflict. Classical accounts argue that capable states reduce violence by extending bureaucratic reach across their territory, thereby enabling the provision of public goods and the maintenance of a monopoly over coercion. In States against Nations, Nicholas Kuipers offers a provocative challenge to this tradition by arguing that state capacity itself may generate conflict. The book’s central claim is that capable states rely on meritocratic recruitment into public bureaucracies. While efficient, such systems can systematically exclude disadvantaged groups from access to valuable state employment, generating grievances and undermining nation-building efforts. The result is a fundamental trade-off between state-building and inclusive representation: stronger bureaucracies may simultaneously weaken national attachment among excluded groups. To support this argument, Kuipers combines an ambitious range of methods and data. The book draws on cross-national analyses linking bureaucratic recruitment to conflict incidence, alongside original surveys, archival evidence, priming experiments, case studies, and regression discontinuity designs based on narrow bureaucracy entry examination failures. These empirical chapters examine demand for government employment, the effects of failing to secure state jobs on national identification, and perceptions linking bureaucrat identity to the quality of public services. The book’s breadth is impressive, and its argument opens a new avenue in the study of state formation and conflict. While some empirical claims are more convincing than others, and several links in the causal chain remain only partially substantiated, the book succeeds in reframing a foundational debate in the conflict literature. Rather than treating state capacity as mostly pacifying, Kuipers highlights how the very institutions that strengthen states may also deepen social exclusion and political resentment.